As the nation’s streets teemed with thousands protesting decades of racism and the most recent horrific example, the two presidential rivals joined their 2020 battle with sharply different visions of leadership.
In so doing, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden provided voters with contrasts in both tone and substance that will shape their battle for the right to wield the presidency’s power the next four years.
Just 15 hours after Trump displayed the empty words and symbolic gestures that have exemplified his failure to cope with the country’s current trifecta of problems, Biden ended weeks respecting Delaware’s self-isolation guidelines with a thoughtful outline of the policies and approach he would bring to the White House.
“The country is crying out for leadership,” Biden said, using terms absent from the presidency the past four years. “Leadership that can unite us. Leadership that can bring us together.”
He spoke the morning after Trump sought cover from his failure to provide substantive solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting recession and the latest outburst of racial divisions by echoing the “law and order” hardline appeal Richard Nixon used to win the presidency a half-century ago and staging what aides saw as a compelling demonstration of personal toughness.
First, security personnel used tear gas and pepper bombs to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square. Then, Trump and a coterie including Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the fatigues-clad chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff marched through ranks of law enforcement personnel to the venerable St. John’s Episcopal Church, where, inexplicably, he silently held aloft a Bible.
That demonstration, Biden said, suggested the president “is more interested in power than in principle.” But criticism of Trump’s photo op was but a small portion of his speech.
“The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism,” the former vice president said. “To deal with the growing economic inequality in our nation. And to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation — to so many.”
He urged Congress to act immediately on police reform measures being drafted by the Congressional Black Caucus, including legislation to bar the kinds of choke holds that caused George Floyd’s death, “to stop transferring weapons of war to police forces, to improve oversight and accountability, to create a model use of force standard.”
If elected, Biden said he would create a national police oversight commission. And he renewed his call to expand Obamacare, noting that Trump, “even now in the midst of a public health crisis with massive unemployment, wants to destroy it” by backing a legal challenge that would invalidate key provisions.
These are just the first items in Biden’s plans to pledge an activist agenda.
Asked last month for his plan to put 35 million unemployed Americans back to work, Trump replied, “I think we have announced a plan. We are opening up our country … The plan is each state opening.” That resembled his prior forecast that, with warmer weather, the coronavirus itself would begin to vanish.
Then, last Friday, in a rambling 40-minute speech hailing better-than-expected jobless numbers, Trump said they mitigated the need for additional action to combat the systemic racism targeted by the protests over Floyd’s murder.
Though Trump had reason to feel upbeat over the unanticipated drop in unemployment, his optimism failed to acknowledge that minority joblessness rose.
As the campaign proceeds, this week’s contrast between an activist Biden and a self-satisfied Trump may well be magnified. That’s because the veteran former vice president has become the candidate of change, while the 2016 revolutionary has become the status quo incumbent.
A repetition of May’s unexpectedly strong job numbers may embolden Trump’s reliance on more of the same. But that’s a big gamble when polls show that two of three Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
